Uniqueness seems to sell. We like what we aren’t and we want to surround ourselves with people who go against the status quo. It always seems like this same sentiment exists in startup job postings, where companies are looking for the next creative talent who “thinks outside the box.”
That’s what Waterloo entrepreneur Brenden Sherratt is doing to land his next startup gig. Instead of simply applying for a job, Sherratt created a fake PR and marketing firm, “Sherratt.ca,” to get the attention of startups. Ideally once they see that it’s actually just one person who wants to work for them, they’ll interview him.
“I launched myself as a PR and marketing startup and my hope is that this fun, creative thing will get people looking at it and will make people realize it’s a person and not a business,” Sherratt told BetaKit.
The fake “Sherratt PR” agency is actually semi-real. It boasts that Sheratt, “your personal marketing solution,” has launched over 30 websites and apps in three years. And that’s actually true.
Previously he worked for a Waterloo-based agency called Sortable, owned by Rebellion Media. Sortable developed a niche sorting engine that it uses to develop apps and websites that allow consumers to compare and choose between different things. In fact, we wrote about one of Sortable’s companies, RideNerd, in which Sheratt was interviewed as cofounder.
He left Sortable in December and has been on the hunt for the perfect job since. Ideally it will be in a PR and marketing role for a consumer tech company. He said he’s had a few job offers already, but he didn’t see himself working for those companies.
Needless to say, a guy like Sherratt probably won’t have to wait too long before somebody comes calling, especially with his unique form of job-hunting.
Interesting PR ploys in order to get highered, such as Sherratt’s, are quite common in fact. In Canada, PasswordBox’s former “super intern” Meaghan Smulders landed on the front page of the Toronto Star nearly two years ago. That came after she personally organized a interning tour over the summer, working for two-week stints at ten companies over 112 days. She was offered 18 different positions from companies as a result and chose Beyond The Rack, where she worked just prior to PasswordBox.
Then there was also the infamous “GooglePleaseHire.Me” Guy, who created a website in 2011 to get “one shot at an interview”. Ultimately Matthew Epstein was offered jobs at two “household tech names,” but alas not Google. His Youtube video landed nearly half-a-million views and he took a job with San Francisco-based SigFig.
Lets hope Sherratt see’s some luck come his way soon.